


Her Grief is Like a Dying Star

by duchessofthemoonbase



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, F/M, but very romantic angst, post hell-bent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 14:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5379275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duchessofthemoonbase/pseuds/duchessofthemoonbase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara has a mysterious hidden room on their Tardis, and Ashildr can't help her curiosity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her Grief is Like a Dying Star

Ashildr had reached an exceptional and unheard of age where she had simply stopped caring about good manners, about what constituted an invasion of privacy and what didn’t. And this was why she checked in. Curiosity. A much younger woman might have made the excuse to herself that she was only checking in on her friend’s sanity, but Ashildr did not feel the need to excuse herself.

 

Ashildr knew how to operate the Tardis better than Clara, but it clearly favored Clara more, leaving her packages of her favorite biscuits on the console and heating up the blankets lying on her favorite armchair. She supposed this was because Clara saw the Tardis as having a soul, whereas Ashildr had no time for such nonsense.

 

Clara was unaware that Ashildr could operate the monitor in the control room so she could get live footage from every room on the massive ship. Since they had run away in their time-traveling space diner, they had been adding rooms themselves, a library, a spa, a bowling alley. Occasionally the Tardis created rooms herself, like the kitchen stocked with soufflé ingredients or the archery practice room. It was one of these rooms, one in which the Tardis never let Ashildr into, that Clara was always disappearing into. She had tried to get in, but every time she touched the door it burned her skin angrily. “Fine then,” she said begrudgingly at the ship. “I’ll check the cameras.”

 

***

 

The two girls stumbled into the console room, giggling uproariously.

            “Ohmygod,” Clara sighed, collapsing on the bench and catching her breath. “When the Macra had Sylvia in it’s claw, and she whacked it with the shovel? That was incredible.”

            Ashildr raised an eyebrow as she fiddled with the controls. “Not quite as incredible as _The Bell Jar_ , but I suppose it’s comparable.”

            As Clara calmed down, Ashildr noticed a sudden sadness come into her eyes, and watched as she scampered out of the control room. “I think I’m going to do some reading. I’m completely dead after that.”

            Ashildr smirked. “I’m afraid you were dead long before that, dear.”

            Clara laughed. “I suppose so.” And then she was gone. Ashildr smiled. Time to find out where Clara kept running off to.

            Ashildr began to pull the camera feed up on the monitor, feeling the temperature of the console room drop suddenly, like a warning. “Oh piss off.” Ashildr said, the engine grumbling.

            She had trouble comprehending what she was seeing. How it is supposed to make her feel. She can almost feel her heart physically aching, but she cannot tell whether it is in a good way or bad. It’s been so long since she’s felt anywhere close to how Clara must be feeling right now, she’s been alone and isolated for so long, never letting anyone’s words or smile permeate her armor. It’s hard to watch, but she can’t stop.  So she starts watching more, day after day, like training, feeling her heart thaw as she watches. It is too extraordinary to be forgotten, so she writes it down.

 

***

 

_Today I found out what Clara’s secret room is. The one the Tardis made for her. It is another console room, blue with glowing orange roundels, old books lining the shelves. Tardises can have spare console rooms that sit by unused; I read it in the manual. I don’t need to ask whose console room it is supposed to be imitating. Who else’s could it be?_

_Even from the screen I can see the change in Clara’s eyes as she slowly walks in, wide-eyed and at the verge of tears, watching the Gallifreyan symbols spin above her. “Hello Doctor,” she says, and the room glows slightly brighter, smiling at her._

_She starts running up and down the small flights of stairs, practically twirling, running her fingers across the spines of the books. “You know who I met today?” Clara asks the empty space at the console. “Sylvia Plath. You would have bloody loved her.” Clara smiles to herself. “Even in the grip of a monstrous alien crab she’s still a delight.”_

_I have apparently grieved a lot myself, according to my journals, back in those days where I let myself love other people. I don’t think it was anything like this._

_“Ashildr’s nice.” Clara says, and I raise my eyebrows at the mention of my name. “She’s no you, but we’re starting to get into a routine.” She starts giggling. “Remember when we were at the end of the universe, with Orson Pink? And we heard the knocking and you had to find out what it was?” She stops for a dramatic pause and I resist the urge to roll my eyes._

_“It was just Ashildr messing with you.” Clara says laughing. “Isn’t that hilarious? And we were so scared.”_

_I watch Clara curl up in the chair near the console and keep talking, relaying everything that’s last happened since the Doctor lost his memory. Strangely, I feel guilt awaken in me and I shut it off._

 

***

 

_I let temptation get to me again and watch Clara from the console monitor. This time, she looks jubilant, and I’m confused._

_Clara has an antiquated Mp3 device plugged into a speaker and is wearing pajama pants and a tank top._

_“I have too much energy to sleep,” she says to the console. “Thought I’d jam out instead.”_

_I watch as Clara presses a button on the speaker, and “Pretty Woman” begins blaring. She starts singing along, “pretty woman, won’t you stay with me?” and starts twirling around the console room, dancing and laughing, giggling but with shiny, tearful eyes._

_“I loved when you played the guitar you know.” Clara says, running her fingers over the useless controls. She smirks. “Probably more than was appropriate.”_

_The next song begins to play, a cover of “Don’t Stop Me Now,” and Clara begins to sing along, her voice lovely and melodious, echoing around the room. It is not the kind of singing one does absentmindedly; it is the kind of singing where every word is weighted down with a story outsiders can only try to guess at._

_“I’m a rocket ship on my way to mars, on a collision course, I am a satellite, out of control…” I’ve never thought of this song as a sad one, when Queen plays it it’s energetic and happy, but Clara makes it sound like the saddest ballad ever sung._

_“Don’t stop me now, I don’t want to stop at all…” Clara sings out softly, gazing wistfully around the room._

_I can feel my heart breaking for her. Soon an old waltz starts playing, and she starts to dance with an invisible man, smiling up at the nothingness with tears in her eyes. “I wish we had danced more,” she whispers, and suddenly I feel invasive again, and switch the screen off._

 

***

 

_I haven’t checked on Clara in her hidden room for a while, and so I switch on the monitor. She is standing at the top level of the room; hand on the railing, the bookshelf behind her. She’s frozen there, staring at the console, her fingers running over the railing._

_“You know, the cloisters weren’t the first place that I told you that I loved you,” she says, and I watch as she lets the confession wash over her. “The first time, it was right here. Not properly, of course. I was telling it to Danny, but looking right at you, hoping you’d hear something in my voice and you’d just_ know _. Maybe you did. Maybe you did, but you were scared to let yourself believe it.”_

_I start realizing how much about Clara and the Doctor I still do not know, watching her tell theses stories to herself._

_“I wish I had told you then.” Clara says. “Earlier. I could have run down and told you and there would have been so much more time…” Her voice trails off and she collapses on the stairs. She looks so distraught I have trouble looking at her face. She’s sobbing._

_“Every day, you know, every day I think about grabbing the Tardis controls and flying off to find you somewhere, but I know I can’t.” Clara stifles her sobs into her hands and I cringe from her pain._

_“You spent 4.5 billion years punching a hole through a bloody diamond wall to get to me, and then I had to watch you look at me like a stranger, talk to me like we didn’t have a love so strong the most powerful civilization in the universe was afraid of it.” Clara laughs. “That was kind of cool, actually.”_

_I watch Clara lie down on the floor, curled up in a ball and still staring at the console. “You know what the saddest part is?” she whispers. “I’m not just grieving you. I’m grieving myself. I’m never going to be that happy again. Sure I have a Tardis, some new friends, but I will never,_ ever _feel as incredible as I did holding your hand, running into chaos, so filled with love and adrenaline I barely felt human. I’ll never be that alive again.”_

_I turn the monitor off._

 

***

 

_It’s been three years. Clara has been better, I think. She is still different however, from the bright-eyed young girl I wrote about from the Viking Village and the Trap Street. In those entries I never recorded the melancholy wistfulness in her eyes. It would have been too haunting for me not to write down if it had existed then._

_Clara has not been going into the room as much, but today, I see her creep down the hallway and so I run back to the console room to check the monitor._

_She walks into the console room, and the roundels glow sunset orange at her presence. I don’t think she’s been in there for a while. The room missed her._

_Clara walks up to the console, looking stronger, healthier, than she did a couple of years back. Slightly older, even though physically her body hasn’t aged a bit. She puts her hands on the console and closes her eyes._

_“Doctor,” she whispers. “Doctor, you’ll probably never hear this, but maybe it will come to you in a dream. Probably not. The universe was never that nice to us in the end.”_

_Clara opens her eyes and smiles. “I’m the Doctor now too, you know. You’d be proud of me, I hope. Flying across the universe, having adventures, helping people. I also picked out the pears in my fruit salad this morning, so at least you can be proud of me for that.” She giggles._

_“I’ve pulled myself out of my grief I think, finally. I didn’t think it would ever stop. But just because my grief is over, my love, does not mean that you are not entwined with everything I do, everything I think and see, because believe me, you are.”_

_Clara smiles and wipes a tear from her eye. “I think about you when I’m running away from things and running to them, when I’m making jokes to distract the enemy, when I wear my red velvet sweater. I think of you at the rock concerts I go to with Ashildr and when I see children holding hands and running from imaginary monsters. You’re still far away, but not really.”_

_“We’re still running together, you see.” she says, smiling. “It’s just a bit different now.” Clara touches the console one last time and turns to leave. “Goodbye, Doctor,” she whispers, staring at the spinning console as she finally closes the door._

_The room then disappears. The door fades into the hallway. I never see it again._

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic so hopefully I'm doing this right. Hell Bent gave me a lot of feelings. Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
